Orthography in Linguistics

Grapheme, Phoneme, and Diagraph

A phoneme is a unit of speech to distinguish one word from another. There is a distinction between the phonemes /b/ and /p/, differentiating between the words bad and pad. A phoneme does not correspond to exactly one sound. The perception of more than one sound can be as a single phoneme; these sounds are called allophones. Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies the organization of sounds in language.

A grapheme is a writing character considered a single unit but may have different variants. For example, grapheme <B> contains the variants b and B.

A diagraph is a pair of characters representing a single phoneme. In English, the pair of letters "ng" represent a single phoneme in the word going.

Linguistic Concepts of Orthography

Finally, let's review a few more orthographic concepts which are related to the study of linguistics.

The alphabetic principle states that the letters and combinations of letters are related to a language's speech sounds predictably and systematically. Some languages, such as Spanish, have a writing system and spelling conventions with a high degree of consistency concerning the spoken language. English and French, however, have more discrepancies between sounds and symbols. Consider the following examples in which the orthography of English does not adhere to a simple one symbol to one sound relationship:

• the letters i, y, and e all sound like /i/in the words, we, thirty, tortellini
• the letter b is not pronounced in the word lamb
• the difference in the pronunciation of the letter c in car and ace

Conversely, orthographic depth describes the degree to which an alphabetic orthography diverges from a simple sound-symbol relationship. The more an alphabet deviates from the alphabetic principle, the "deeper" it is, and the harder it is to predict the pronunciation of a written word based on its spelling.

A defective orthography is an orthography that does not represent all the phonemic differences of a language. Defectiveness can arise for several reasons. Some causes of defectiveness in alphabets include:

• Historical spellings, which do not reflect changes in pronunciation over time
• Lack of symbols for vowels, or lack of distinctions for vowel length or tone

Lesson Summary

Orthography is the set of conventions used to write a language. Orthographies can be categorized as logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic. Alphabetic orthographies can be further divided into consonantal alphabets and true alphabets, symbols for consonant and vowel sounds. The Western orthographic tradition has its roots in the ancient logographic system Cuneiform.

Punctuation, the use of spacing and punctuation marks in an orthographic system. There is a differentiation between graphemes, units of writing such as the letter <B> and its variations b and B, and phonemes, units of speech used to distinguish words. A diagraph is a combination of two letters corresponding to a single phoneme, such as ng in the word going.

Three terms are related to the degree of consistency with which an alphabet represents the sounds of a language: the alphabetic principle, orthographic depth, and defective orthography. The alphabetic principle states that letters and combinations of letters systematically and consistently represent the sounds of a language. Orthographic depth describes the extent to which a language deviates from a simple sound to symbol relationship. Defective orthography is when an orthographic system does not represent all the phonemes of a language.